horsemouth is getting old and clunky. after developing arthritis in the little finger of his right hand (a finger he fortunately never uses for picking), he is now developing arthritis in the little finger of his left hand (one he unfortunately does use for fretting).
he has arthritis in the other joints of both hands of course (but he isn't feeling them yet).
there are (of course) plenty of older guitarists in the world who have faced these problems before. being less able to play with the little finger is a major loss in the classical repertoire in other repertoires it can be routed around by moving the hand. django reinhardt developed a whole technique around only having two fingers on the left hand (and guess what? it involved moving the hand).
come to it horsemouth can play a decent impersonation of most of his fingerpicking stuff just with thumb and forefinger.
there's always slide horsemouth observes (or cheating as the reverend gary davis would call it).
music (horsemouth opines) is mainly in the ears and the brain.
when fahey grew old he took up electric guitar (he clearly still had strong fingers because he's bending strings all over the shop). with fahey it's not so much speed and accuracy as patience and digging deep (you want speed and accuracy check out leo kottke). it's listening and framing that makes what fahey does great.
‘if the thought really yielded to the object, if its attention were on the object, not on its category, the very objects would start talking under the lingering eye’.
remarks adorno at some point in negative dialectics.
outside it is misty. horsemouth will be out for a wander after breakfast.
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